'FRIENDS, the fight is on, it's the fight of our lives, let's get out there and win it,'' Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared in Queensland yesterday, back at work after the death of her father.

For Gillard the fight is on at a number of levels. You'd think a small but steady rebound in the polls since late May might buy the Prime Minister some time and breathing space and kudos from her colleagues, but politics is a perverse and brutal business.

Camp Rudd has simply shifted the goal posts. After months of saying that ''we are on a path to slaughter'', now the working rationale is that with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott so unpopular, and with Liberals in the states showing their true colours with job and service cuts, ''we could actually win if we get rid of our intractable problem with the voters''.

And what intractable problem would that be? The fact that people neither like nor trust the incumbent of The Lodge.

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Hurry, hurry, hurry. Time is now of the essence. Rudd supporters suggest the next couple of opinion polls will be crucial. Crucial to what, exactly? To convincing caucus members to switch their allegiance and run over Gillard's Praetorian Guard in the ministry. To persuading them that ministers opposing Rudd's return are past caring about victory; exhausted, they are buffing their legacy before a restorative snooze in retirement or opposition.

It's perhaps not widely understood that Camp Rudd hasn't got much time. There are only four weeks between now and the end of the year when both the House of Reps and the Senate are sitting. That means only four weeks when the whole Labor caucus is gathered in Canberra - a precondition for a leadership change.

Camp Rudd feels it needs to leverage the next two published poll cycles: this week's Nielsen and Newspoll, and the Newspoll the fortnight after. (Presumably if things get really willing, there's always recourse to that toxic old destabilisation chestnut: leaked party polling.)

So if that's the game we are in (and I'm afraid we are, whether readers want to be or not), what does today's Age/Nielsen tell us?

Labor's primary vote continues to improve; it has now risen 2 points a month for four months. Kevin Rudd remains popular; when respondents are prompted with a leading question about whether his return to the top job would change their vote, the results suggest Labor's primary vote could rise 10 points to an election-winning position.

Rudd beats Gillard as preferred Labor leader (55 per cent to 37 per cent), but his support has dropped 7 points since the beginning of June. So if voter sympathy for Rudd has peaked, how long would a positive ''Rudd effect'' actually last? Voters literally split down the middle when asked whether Labor should change leaders, and a majority of Labor and Green voters believe the party should stay with Gillard.

Gillard remains unpopular, but her personal standing has been improving for three months. Today she leads Abbott as preferred prime minister by 3 points. Each camp will spin this poll for their desired candidate.

Perhaps the Rudd camp is right: voters will never fully recover trust in Gillard, and hard-working Labor MPs don't deserve to go out backwards because of her integrity problem. (Exhibit A: a bloke with a 59 per cent disapproval rating is about to win the next federal election. Duh.)

Fair enough.

But this is also true. Gillard shows signs of defying the lead in her own saddle bags. That's fact, not conjecture. Left to consolidate without phase … whatever … of the obsessive and enervating Rudd revenge tragedy, how far could she go?

Now to poor old Tony Abbott. What a messy few weeks.

Free-range Barnaby colliding with Liberals who'd had more than a gutful of the good Senator Joyce and the reflexive populism he personifies. Scrappy media performances. David Marr's Quarterly Essay unleashing a few anecdote-wielding ghosts from 1977. Conservative state governments hacking into services people know and care about. A sense that the Coalition doesn't quite know where to position the carbon price attack post-July 1.

Insult and injury. A newspaper column praises Joe Hockey as having a Clintonesque capacity to connect. Even Peter Costello publicly praised Malcolm Turnbull. Given these two could once barely stand being in the same room, that delicate rapprochement is interesting, to say the least.

Today's Age poll shows Turnbull is the preferred opposition leader (63 per cent to Abbott's 30 per cent). Worse for Abbott, Turnbull is preferred by Coalition voters (53 per cent to 45 per cent). Abbott's approval in this survey is down 3 points, and his disapproval has hit a new record, 59 per cent.

Today's poll, of course, also shows the Coalition would win any election held now, hardly an insignificant point.

But in my view, recent events should prompt Abbott to ask himself the following: Will the current strategy deliver me victory (a different question to whether it will deliver the Coalition victory)? Am I listening to enough people? Am I leaving myself enough room to reposition and nuance? And, am I becoming a prisoner of my negative talking points?

43 comments

You certainly have a way with words. Do you write comedy after hours? ;-)

"Gillard remains unpopular.'' Only because the media keep banging on about it. Maybe if they consulted people who think and (sometimes) read the tabloids, they may change their minds on this one.

"A newspaper column praises Joe Hockey as having a Clintonesque capacity..." this is priceless, Joe is probably an average backbencher. "Clintonesque..." it doesn't matter if you put lipstick on it is s till a ...... "Clintonesque" I must remember that one :-) :-)

"Free-range Barnaby ..." this one is a pearler. If ever the bods on the Opposition benches wanted a battery hen, Barnaby would be their first choice.

Unfortunately the excess of Howard's Hangover on the front bench of the Opposition, demonstrates either the severe lack of talent available or (more likely) that a severe lack of imagination and intellect abounds within conservative ranks.

Commenter

DenisPC9

Location

New England Region

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 8:44AM

Dictators don't like to have anyone with intelligence or guts in case they challenge.

Look at Queensland.

Commenter

J. Fraser

Location

Queensland

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 10:12AM

You object, DenisPC9, to the line "Gillard remains unpopular.'' and claim it's "Only because the media keep banging on about it"Have you considered that the reason why Abbott's ratings are not higher, might also be because we get a one-sided presentation about him from the media as well ?

Commenter

JohnB

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 12:29PM

"Maybe if they consulted people who think and (sometimes) read the tabloids". What, like me? Still unpopular. Funny, I always thought the New England area was here on earth, but apparently I was wrong.

Commenter

Weary

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 12:55PM

J.Fraser - Dictators don't win democratically held elections in a history-making landslide. You should read more buddy.

Commenter

Weary

Location

Sydney

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 1:18PM

The media keep banging on about it because it does not suit their agenda and they expect the public to believe their crap. The major rule of the Fairfax/Murdoch media is "Treat your readers as complete fools and idiots, tell them anything and they will believe it.

Another rule is "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

Commenter

Bill

Location

Canadian

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 2:59PM

@"Weary"

And you should pay more attention to the rise & rise of newman .... from outside parliament at that.

Name another western democracy where the Leader of a political party answered questions for the elected M.P.s of parliament before he was elected to that parliament.

Commenter

J. Fraser

Location

Queensland

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 3:21PM

@weary, I can understand your being geographically challenged. I put that down to the pollution and being so close to the centre of NSW state govt.

"What, like me?" I did add the rider " ... people who think..." ;-)

Commenter

DenisPC9

Location

New England Region

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 3:56PM

Weary,

"Dictators don't win democratically held elections in a history-making landslide. You should read more buddy."

Try telling that to a German.

A compliant press and heavy backing from corporate interests, plutocrats and the Catholic Church carried another young, aspiring dictator to successive LANDSLIDE election victories in Germany during the 1930s.

Maybe you should read more. The combined power of plutocrats (Rienhart and Palmer or Krupps and Bush - take your pick), foreign corporations (Union Bank or News Corporation - take your pick), and the Catholic Church (who also backed Franco, Salazar, Somoza, Pinochet, Mussolini and Marcos) is more than capable of replacing democracy with mob-rule and dictatorship.

Democracy is a goal toward which we have made only the first tentative steps. Few of us would recognise a genuinely democratic society if we saw one and none of us is grown up enough to handle the responsibilities of citizenship in such a society. These are things that we can only aspire to on behalf of generations yet unborn. Meanwhile, the price of our (relaative) liberty really is eternal vigilance against type of simplistic triumphalism you spout.

Newman's election in Queensland was not the result of democracy in action but of a malfunction of our social consciousness and a failure of our collective will. It is a setback on the road to democracy, but not one that cannot be overcome in time.

To paraphrase Lincolns famous words: you can fool some of the people some of the time, and maybe even all of the people....but not for long. Campbell's "honeymoon" period was the shortest on record. Abbott won't even get to fling the garter.

Commenter

v

Date and time

September 17, 2012, 4:34PM

In my opinion the interview with Kevin Rudd on 7.30 showed him as an important supporter of the Labor cause. He is one who is more than willing to use his position and skills in supporting Julia Gillard in her quest to continue with the creative and important reforms Labor is bringing about for the benefit of all Australians.We need all Australians to be better educated. We need all Australians to have access to good medical treatment. Weneed all Australians with disabilities to have expert care.We need all Australians to have access to first class communications. If we achieve these outcomes, then all Australians will be able to contribute not only to their own well being, but to the nation's growth.

I believe Kevin Rudd is prepared to put all these objectives above leadership aspirations.